Is there a way to make my Ultrabay Slim drive work through USB?

I put a 2nd HDD instead of my Ultrabay Slim DVD drive. Now its just sitting there being wasted. Is there a way to add connectors between the back of the DVD drive and a USB interface so I can use the drive as a USB device?

 

check out ebay, they have a cable or enclosre for the drive (T60 14.1 style that i know of).

 

I don't know if they work for the Ultrabay slim found in T400. I also don't trust ebay.

Is the connector a proprietory Lenovo connector? So its not technically a SATA connector then right?

 

The connector isn't proprietary, it's a slimline SATA connector.

The adapter for a T60 optical drive will not work with that of a T400. The T60 doesn't utilize the SATA form factor for it's optical drive.

 

Where might one buy this slimline sata cable to usb wire? I am assuming it needs 2 wires, one for power one for data?

 

I looked into this a short time ago.


http://www.cooldrives.com/mimiandstsah.html

 

There's a $13US-delivered or $22US cable here to do what you want, depending on if you have a esata/usb (powered) port or not.

 

The one from cooldrives looks like the connector on my dvd drive. Although it is kinda big and kinda ugly looking.

That cable looks to be ideal in size. Does that connector fit the Ultrabay slim connector though? It doesnt say anything about slimline SATA? Also is there a way to purchase this off something else other than Ebay?

 

Of course. Amazon, newegg, probably a number of other places as well.

 

Now, that would be a great idea for the use of ultrabay DVDR. I'm in the same boat, got 2nd hdd with ultrabay adapter. Looks like connection cable is not an issue in this case and there are even options to take advantage of new eSATA/USB connector on T400s. But it would be great to have some kind of robust box enclosure for our DVDR drive with integrated cable for external use, similar to all those external hdd conversion kits. I'm really surprise Lenovo is not offering that.

 

Do nothing but get a Dell E-Family (E6500/E6400) External Media Bay.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...etail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=430-3116

i am assuming you have 9.5mm drive.

 

Do you think Lenovo's ultra-slim DVDR will fit in there seamlessly? I'm talking about shape and latch mechanism?

 

Did you see this?

 

Interesting link. Probably won't work with T400/500 machines though since it looks like it's using the older style Ultrabay PATA connector.

Now this one looks like it'd work, but you'll have to remove the little plastic piece to the side of the SATA connector on the Lenovo DVD drive.

 

I have ordered one myself as I have the Dell E6500 and very soon I will have T400. I think both use a 9.5mm Sata drive. I am not sure about the latch mechanism though. In the worst case you might have to remove the drive by first ejecting it and then pulling the cover.

Update: I think I might have spoken early
I am thinking since there is only one cable in the picture of the Dell bay, it might be a special USB+ESATA connector that dell uses. I have that port on my E6500 and thats where it might be going. I can confirm this once Dell Chat is available.

 

BINGO!!! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. And you are correct, that little plastic piece on the back needs to be removed, just 2 screws holding it. Here are the pictures of my DVDR drive removed from T400s:





Just placed an order. Will let you guys know as soon as I get it.

 

Please do, I may order one myself but since I don't really "need" it I'd like to see pics before.

 

Here you go, just received that adapter. It fits DVDR drive like a glove!!! It comes with a case, adapter board inside, and two USB cables for data connection and 5V supply. I had to take case apart (very easy), plugged in slim adapter board, close the case and secure with 2 screws in the back. So far everything works 100%





Keep in mind, I had to take black tab off the back of T400s DVDR drive. A very nice slim gadget and I don't have to remove my ultra hdd whenever I need to read/write DVDR/CDR.

 

This is a possibility as well. I've looked at it as an alternative to carrying the ultrabase to my x200

 

twister, do you have to use both cables or can it run on just one usb cable?

thanks!

 

That PCB board inside looks very similar to what I got in mine, probably the same SATA-to-USB controller IC. Just not sure if those power filtering caps in the corner might be in a way of the drive. Another exception is the one I got has mini-usb connector on the back and comes with a bezel cut out specifically for our drive.

 

You do need to have power cable plugged in.

... just found one little problem. This adapter didn't come with any software drivers. It does work fine after you plug it in and boot up laptop, but for some reason if you bootup laptop first and than plug it in - its not recognized. Will search for usb to sata generic drivers on the net...

NEVER MIND the last comment. Apparently, everything works OK as plug'n'play, but you have to power it up first and THAN connect usb-data cable. Duh!

 

That looks nice. Frustrating that you need two cables, though. Is there something equivalent that can use the ESATA port? Ideally that has a bit more of an enclosure than just a cable. I'm still amazed Lenovo doesn't offer something like that...

 

The Dell's have a ESATA/USB combo port, which runs power over e-sata. If you have the same port, then could consider getting the Dell E-modular bay shown at the bottom of this post.

 

Most Thinkpads dont have this e-Sata port, however, one can get a cheap ExpressCard esata card and use it. (probably wont boot from it though).

 

Can you insert in that case UltraBay Slim ? I mean HDD caddy ? Will it run or there might be some trouble with powering a HDD instead of optical drive ?

Do you also have to remove plastic from the rear on the hdd caddy ?

Cheers

 

I am not sure if your question was related to USB caddy or Dell Latitude E Family external media bay drive. I will try to answer them anyways

Right now there are (atleast) 3 ways to connect your Slim (9.5mm) drive/caddy (Optical or HDD) to your Thinkpad computer.

1) Use an external USB powered bay or cable
2) Dell Latitude E Family external media bay drive with an ExpressCard to e-Sata adapter (if you dont have e-Sata port on your thinkpad)
3) Get e-sata to mini-sata cable + ExpressCard to e-Sata Adapter.

Once you connect, you can use HDD or Optical that is not a problem with Power.

The up side with USB is that its the cheaper option but downside is that you will get less speed while transferring data and also you will loose 2 USB ports and its a hassle

Dell E family bay is the most expensive but the most secure and trouble free way to go.

I hope it helps.

 

I was talking about UltraBay Slim (Hdd caddy) that you insert into UltraBase originally ...

Would it fit into that case that twister has bought without removing plastic parts that are at the back of it ?


The thing is that I have already my hdd in ultrabase, but I dont use this hdd that frequently. I hear it spinning quite a long. When I switch to Maximum Battery Life it will shut down because of inactivity in a few mins. Is there any way to stop it spinning faster ? I really use it for storage only and I would like to have this hdd for a loooong time so less spinning = longer life , and absolutely no noise because ssd in my tablet is noisless only sometime that penrn whine

Cheers

 

I'm looking into potentially doing the same thing, here. but on the T400s, which fortunately has the Combo ESATA port.
Has anyone tried the one from geeks.com:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BLK-USBEXT-NBCD-SATA&cat=CDR
And can compare to the ebay one pictured above?

Ideally, I'd like something that has the following:

1) A bit of a case, for added protection/travel. Or is this perhaps unnecessary?
2) ESata would be a plus, for faster speeds and convenience, but it would be nice to have a USB option as well, to connect to other systems as well. I'm not sure if that's possible.
3) If using USB, I'd prefer not to need two cables. Two USB ports is less than ideal (I'm not entirely clear why it's necessary, if both SATA and USB are at 5V), but I'd at least prefer something with only one cable (two connectors at either end), since it's less to deal with/lose track of.

I'm not sure I understand how something like this works:
http://www.addonics.com/products/io/aau2esa.asp
If the straight-to-usb adapter would need power, too. Why doesn't this one?


The Dell enclosure seems fairly good, but I'm not certain if the Lenovo drives will fit in it, and somehow I'd prefer not having the Dell branding.

Are there any new options around, or are these still the best choices? I'm completely surprised that Lenovo doesn't offer an enclosure themselves. Now that they have machines with an ESATA port, does anyone think this will be coming soon?

 

$17US 9.5mm external USB case for SATA optical drive

 

Note how that's the same one that Lew recommended and twister bought:

___________________________________________

so it's not really a newer option. Nor does it solve or answer my ESATA/2-USB questions.

 

*bump*
Thanks.

 

pems69: I'm curious here, please help me understand your desire for an eSATA interface for your optical drive. I don't know what's in the T400s, but my T400's optical drive is a Hitachi-LG GSA U20N which tops out at 8x DVD read -- just under 11MBps.

Unless I'm mistaken, USB these days should easily handle 30-40MBps sustained rates -- far faster than the max the DVD can push out. Thus my curiosity about why you want eSATA to the optical drive for faster speed?

Oh, one clarification -- I can't specifically "recommend" any of these enclosures as I've not yet had enough need to get around to buying one. Eventually I suppose I will.

 

No, it's a very fair question. I'm planning on doing the SSD+HDD adapter (in the bay) combination, and so want a decent case for the second drive. This will usually be the optical drive (which doesn't need SATA speeds), but I may switch at some point - with the optical drive in the bay, and use the second drive externally. That could potentially benefit from the faster speeds, but is admittedly isn't strictly necessary.

What I'd really like is to not need to carry around the extra cables (two for USB vs only one for eSATA, and then takes up an extra port, or carry around a hub), and risk misplacing it. The USB data cable looks standard, but the power connector one might not be, and the enclosure then becomes mostly useless. It's not entirely clear to me why both cannot be combined into a single USB connection, if one is power, and the other is data.

Does that help clarify?
I realize you can't endorse anything specifically, but I know others have done more searching than I have, and so might have other suggestions. I'm willing to take a bit of a risk, in the end.

 

I see what you're getting at. I suppose the key question is whether the power cable is really needed. One of the ebay auctions shows it in use without the additional power cable. The other set of auctions seem to show a unit with a "Y" cable. I've not used an optical drive in an external enclosure, but I've never had to use a second cable on any external 2.5" hard drive, always seems to be fine with just the data cable powering the drive. You can find out for yourself for $20.

If you're anything like me you'll find you very rarely use the optical drive. Of course I also don't watch DVD movies or rip CD's. I suppose if I did I might end up using it more often. Even then if I had the enclosure it'd be a rare case where I'd need to have the optical drive in the system (pretty much only if I needed to boot from a CD or DVD).

My vote is pony up $20 and see how well it works for your situation. But then I learned a long time ago that I tend to overanalyze things to death and learned for force myself to make a decision and see how it goes. $20 is cheap compared to hours and hours of research and wondering.

 

So I emailed the Ebay seller, who said that usually, the power cable is not necessary, and that only high powered USB devices need it. In fact, he said that "mostly, DVDs don't need the extra power." Going back through the thread, I then noticed how twister specifically said he *did* need the power cable. So I'm not so sure I trust the seller completely...?

@twister - after using the enclosure for a bit, how have you found it? Any problems/comments?

 

I was reading a bit and it appears you can get some DVD drives externally that don't require extra power, but most either require it all of the time or require it when burning.

I ended up just getting Lenovo's answer to this which is an external drive.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...6EBFA734C4CB78F0A4EDF98188B&model-number=2808

Kind of a waste, as the internal drive now sits at home, and I can't just put this one internal for plane rides to watch movies or something, but 95% of the time I will just have the hard drive in the system anyway.

This works for me, costs a lot of money and is somewhat wasteful in the fact that I've got a perfectly good optical drive stuck at home that I can't use, but accomplishes what I wanted.

 

Yikes. That is a lot. Does it at least only require a single USB cable (instead of power, as well?) For that kind of price, already having a drive, I might as well get the Dell ESATA enclosure, and possibly an ESATA->USB(x2?) adapter for the rare times I'd use that.

 

I plugged it in with a single USB cable and it powered up and was able to read discs. I did not try to burn anything running like this. The cable is not a Y cable, it's a straight cable. And it's not mini-usb on the back, it's USB-B on the back of the drive.

It did also come with an A/C adapter and the manual mentions nothing of using the drive without A/C power. They specifically mention burning speeds with A/C adapter. So I suspect you need to use the power adapter to make the drive work properly, especially if you're burning.

 

Thanks for that; it's reassuring to hear that it's not just something with this particular enclosure, or drive, and that's it's something for almost all of them.

 

Works great. True, needs a power cable (small usb cable, no ac/dc adapter) which should be plugged in first before usb data cable. But for under $20, this is not a big deal. You get back the use of your DVDR in a perfect compact package. IMHO its a very small trade off.

 

True; it's not that awful a tradeoff. But for only a little more, you could go all the way to an ESATA enclosure: the Dell one, and then have faster speeds for anything else you might need. Out of curiosity, is there any reason you didn't choose that one? If I hadn't seen you already with this one, I would probably have gone that route, if just because it was a known brand, instead of some random ebay seller.

 

Wasn't Dell drive $50-$60 plus shipping? And it was only a generic box without front panel specifically cut out for Lenovo drive? I hardly use DVDR for backup, so I'm OK with my selection.

 

It's $50, but I figure I might be able to sqeeze free shipping in there. I'm not sure about the generic-box part, it looks about as generic-y as the one you bought does. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=349325&page=3

 

Saw this on ebay, but didn't get a response from the seller in time. Maybe he'll relist. http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-E-Sata-DVD...ters?hash=item4ceb016764&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14